It was after 3:00 a.m.

Last night I was haunted and abused by nightmares of all shapes and sizes. I was tormented to the point that I was forced awake and I was breathing heavy and my heart was racing and pounding in my chest. I may have been shivering as well. The truly horrifying thing about it was I couldn’t remember what scared me so.

I know at least one moment involved the ex-girlfriend and another involved a very heavy man sitting on my feet and legs. Take whatever symbolism you like from that. But that wasn’t the thing or the image that forced me to wake up in such a panic. I just don’t know what it was. That may have been the scariest part, not knowing why I was shocked awake so violently.

I felt crazy in that moment of violent alertness after such troubled slumber. The world and everything around me didn’t make sense and the beating of my heart pounding in my ears was akin to Edgar Allen Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart ticking in the floor boards; tattling on the murder so gruesomely performed.

I was up at 3:00 in the morning feeling like I had been through a haunted house of hell and insanity. It took me quite a while to actually calm down, catch my breath and feel my heart slow to a normal relaxed pace.  I knew where I was but I was still scared. I had to lay there in the silence of 3:00 a.m. and try to collect my thoughts while trying to avoid hearing any possible monsters in the closet or the apocalypse starting outside.  It’s rather difficult to block the world out while trying to remember that you’re in the world and not one constructed from the fears in your mind.

After seeing my Ex in confusion and pain, then the fat guy on my legs, then who knows what other horrors, I felt spent and sad.  I had to force myself to go back to sleep as I still needed to get my rest for the impending waking nightmare of life in a cubicle. When I slapped my alarms off several hours later I was still mildly jolted by the mania my mind had created. Who knows what other dreams I had between the nightmares and the alarm clocks’ buzz? Those fevered 3:00 a.m., dreams were still lingering on the edges of my brain.

I stood in the shower for longer than I should trying to piece together the wild vortex of imagination I had passed through only to be left disappointed. I can’t remember it all and it’s likely for the best. The brain knows how to protect itself and seems to know there are certain things we shouldn’t remember or even have been conscience of happening.

I’m tired today and feel like I haven’t really slept at all. I hope tonight I can get to the dreams I need and don’t struggle to pull myself up from the clutches of my own demented imagination. And honestly, I hope everyone is okay.